... quick reads on the go

... quick reads on the go

Geographical Origin: Western Europe

Stories originating from Western Europe

Once upon a time there lived an old mother goat in a pretty little cottage on the edge of the forest. She had seven little billy goats, and she loved them all dearly. On occasion she would have to leave the cottage to get food for herself and her kids, and today was one of those occasions. She called all her kids together to give them a little lecture on safety. “Listen carefully, my dear children”, she began. “I need to go out to get some food, and I want you all to be very careful because I heard there is a wolf about

There was once a kingdom far to the east where all the citizens were very wealthy. The whole land was covered in fields of wheat, which grew abundantly and apparently effortlessly. The harvests were so rich that everybody had far more wheat than they could eat, which meant that they were able to sell it in the market to merchants from neighbouring kingdoms. This way, some of this kingdom’s citizens were just as wealthy as the king.

Once upon a time in a faraway land there lived a cobbler and his wife. They desperately wanted to have children, but however they tried, it was all in vain. These people lived in a little house next to a mansion, and one of their bedroom windows looked out over the wall of the adjoining property, into an enormous garden, where flowers and vegetables grew side by side in abundance. But nobody ever visited the garden, it was rumoured that the owner of the house, an old woman, was in fact a terrible witch, who possessed terrible dark powers, and as a consequence everybody in the little town avoided contact with her.

There once lived an old widow, who had a daughter and a step daughter. Her step daughter was beautiful and hardworking, ever willing to do whatever was asked of her, little and large tasks, and she was always kind to everybody, including her mother and step sister.

Once upon a time, in a small village in a land not that far away, there lived a very sweet little girl, with her mother and father. Her grandmother lived about half an hour’s walk away, outside the village, in a clearing in the forest that covered the whole area. The grandmother as especially fond of the little girl, and she had made her a cute little red hat

There was a time, long before the inhabitants of Britain wrote down their histories for us all to read, that country was inhabited not just by people like you and me, but wizards, ghouls, monsters, dragons, tricksters, and worse, demons. And just as the mythical gods in ancient Greece and […]

Once upon a time a woodcutter lived at the edge of a great forest with his wife and their two children. They had a boy called Hansl and a girl called Gretl. The family’s house was very small, it was just a hut really, and they were very poor, often […]

Two thieves were prowling around the streets late one night, looking for a house to break into. They were tired and hungry. They weren’t very good at their jobs; they usually made far too much noise, so that they would wake up either the house owner, one of the servants, […]